The headline at Deadspin.com proclaims the Panthers made a $112 million profit over a two-year span, according to a leaked financial document.
While a business valued at $1 billion making money might not be the biggest news, the document does create two obvious problems for the Panthers.
The first would be the leak itself, as the league works hard to keep books closed for its non-Packers members (an accountant somewhere is about to get fired).
But the bigger problem is one of public perception, and that might be more costly.
The Panthers are in the middle of a campaign to get public funding to upgrade 17-year-old Bank of America Stadium, and the city has already offered to help. State funding is harder to come by, with North Carolina governor Pat McCrory (a former mayor of Charlotte) saying there were no funds to give.
That’s an easy statement for a politician to make, and part of the normal noise of such negotiations.
But the documents that show rich people getting rich only add fuel to the fire of public opinion, and will make it harder for them to convince people to share their money, even if they’re not necessarily making more than any other team in the league.